Tuesday, May 27, 2008
First, I took Maddie to the vet on Friday and her ears are 95% better. Right off that news made my weekend. Good thing as I finally tackled the floor in the family room
Oh boy. The carpet itself came off easily; it was simply a matter of cutting it into 4 foot lengths [required by the county for disposal], rolling and tying it the strips up before carting it to the curb. Where I ran into my first snag was the tack strips. Those had been nailed every 4-5 inches...meaning I couldn't remove any strip of significant length. I spent one hour per wall, tearing up the strips.
Next up was pulling up the carpet the owners before me had used as a pad for the concrete floor. It came up, all right, but the rubber backing had fused to the floor. What a mucky mess, which meant I needed to scrape it up.
Faced with the tedious chore, I decided to take a a break and head to Lowe's to pick up the tile primer; however, I got a flat tire [later found two nails/screws in the tire]. I ended up pulling my right shoulder [my bad one from years of swimming] while putting on the donut spare tire.
So the scraping up the rubber gook is progressing slowly. I can only scrape for a short period of time before my shoulder hurts. It's looking like I won't get to lay down the tile until next weekend. It didn't help matters much that I spent the morning at the car dealership getting a new tire. Since it was time for 5000 mile maintenance, I got that done as well, which will save me a Saturday morning.
The axiom for home improvement projects is true. Allow at least double the time because what can go wrong will go wrong. Case in point for me: tack strips and rubber gook.
:) Carol
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